Former Ruston-Lincoln Chamber of Commerce President Andy Halbrook remembers the day 12 years ago he spotted John J. “Mickey” McHale across the room at a birthday party.
“We had been looking for someone to be the lead public figure in the restaurant referendum,” Halbrook said.

“I saw Mickey and knew he was the man for the job.”

By yearend, with McHale as the head of a political action group called LINCPAC, voters had approved the referendum that allowed restaurants to serve alcohol by the drink, and Ruston was set for one of the biggest business growth spurts in decades.

Though it’s easy for suburbanites or city dwellers to go months, if not years, without seeing a farm, the most recent agriculture census for which information is available notes that in 2007 there were 2.1 million farms in the United States.